Early life[]

Griffin was born July 6, 1925, in San Mateo, California, to Mervyn Edward Griffin, Sr., a stockbroker, and Rita Elizabeth Griffin (née Robinson),[3] a homemaker. The family was Irish American. Raised as a Roman Catholic, Griffin started singing in his church choir as a boy, and by his teens was earning extra money as a church organist. His abilities as a pianist played a part in his early entry into show business.

During World War II, Griffin was declared 4F after failing several military physical examinations due to having a slight heart murmur.[6] During the Korean War several years later, he was examined and deemed healthy enough to serve, but by that time was above age 26 and therefore exempt from the draft.

Career[]

Singing[]

Griffin started as a singer on radio at age 19, appearing on San Francisco Sketchbook, a nationally syndicated program based at KFRC. Griffin was overweight as an adolescent and a young man, which disappointed some radio fans when they saw him in person.[6] He wrote years later in his autobiography that originally there was a deliberate effort to keep the public from finding out how he looked. Embarrassed by the weight issue, Griffin resolved to change his appearance, losing 80 pounds in four months.[7]

By 1945, Griffin had earned enough money to form his own record label, Panda Records, which produced Songs by Merv Griffin, the first U.S. album ever recorded on magnetic tape.[9] In 1947, he had a 15-minute Monday–Friday singing program on KFRC in San Francisco.[10]

He became increasingly popular with nightclub audiences, and his fame soared among the general public with his 1950 hit "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts". The song reached the number one spot on the Hit Parade and sold three million copies.[11]

Griffin would go on to film more pictures (The Boy from Oklahoma and Phantom of the Rue Morgue), but soon became disillusioned with movie-making. Griffin bought his contract back from Warner Bros. and decided to devote his attention to a new medium: television.[5]

In the summer of 1954, Merv Griffin and Betty Ann Grove sang & danced for a show called "Summer Holiday" (and "Song Snapshots from a Summer Holiday"). The premise of the show was a "Live musical show with two singers simulating a trip to various places in the world." The show name had alternating titles for the same show, different nights, but were filled with the patter of songs and feet by the two hosts. Merv and Betty were brought together by Byron Paul, producer of "The Jane Froman Show", and Irving Mansfield, the show's creator. Mansfield remembered Merv for his singing in the Grace Moore picture and for his hit song, "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts." The producer of the show (Byron Paul) had already considered Miss Grove for the summer replacement show, but "it was just a matter of finding a boy," Byron said. "I'm quite excited. They're both young, fresh, work well together, work well independently. And I've never met two people who are easier to get along with." The show ran for one summer.[14][15]

In March 2001, Griffin returned to singing with the release of the album It's Like a Dream.

Game show host[]

From 1958 to 1962, Griffin hosted a game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman called Play Your Hunch. The show appeared on all three networks, but primarily on NBC. He also hosted a prime time game show for ABC called Keep Talking. Additionally, he substituted for a week for the vacationing Bill Cullen on The Price Is Right, and also for Bud Collyer on To Tell the Truth. In 1963, NBC offered him the opportunity to host a new game show, Word for Word, which Griffin produced. He also produced Let's Play Post Office for NBC in 1965; Reach for the Stars for NBC in 1967; and One in a Million for ABC in 1967.

Talk show host[]

Griffin scored a coup when Tonight Show host Jack Paar accidentally emerged onto the set of Play Your Hunch during a live broadcast, and Griffin got him to stay for a spontaneous interview. After Paar left The Tonight Show, but before Johnny Carson took over (Carson was still hosting Who Do You Trust? for ABC), Griffin was one of the many guest hosts who presided over Tonight in the interim. Griffin was considered the most successful of the guest hosts,[16] and was rewarded with his own daytime talk show on NBC in 1962. This live, 55-minute program was not successful however, and was cancelled in 1963.

In 1965, Griffin launched a syndicated talk show for Group W (Westinghouse Broadcasting) titled The Merv Griffin Show. The show aired in a variety of time slots throughout North America; many stations ran it in the daytime, others aired it in prime-time and a few broadcast it opposite Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. Griffin's announcer/sidekick was the veteran British character actor Arthur Treacher, who had been his mentor. After Treacher left the show in 1970, Griffin would do the announcing himself, and walk on stage with the phrase: "And now..., here I come!" According to an obituary article on August 24, 2007 in Entertainment Weekly, The Merv Griffin Show was on the air for 21 years and won eleven Emmy Awards during its run.

Griffin dedicated two shows to the topic of Transcendental Mation and its founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one in 1975, the other in 1977; the 1977 ion aired separate from the main series as a standalone special in some regions such as Canada. Griffin himself was an enthusiastic student of the practice.[17]

Griffin would also frequently chat with audience members.[5] One regular audience member, Lillian Miller, would become a fixture on Griffin's program throughout its run.

Griffin's best friend since the sixth grade, Robert (Bob) Murphy, was the producer of The Merv Griffin Show, and eventually became president of Merv Griffin Enterprises.

Late-night host[]

CBS gave Griffin a late-night show opposite Carson in 1969, a move which proved disastrous. The network was uncomfortable with the guests Griffin wanted, who often spoke out against the Vietnam War and on other taboo topics. When political activist Abbie Hoffman was Griffin's guest in April 1970, CBS blurred the video of Hoffman so viewers at home would not see his trademark American flag pattern shirt even though other guests had worn the same shirt in the past, uncensored. Griffin disliked the censorship imposed by CBS and complained.[5]

Sensing that his time at CBS was ending, and tired of the restrictions imposed by the network, Griffin secretly signed a contract with rival company Metromedia. The contract with Metromedia would give him a syndicated daytime talk show deal as soon as CBS canceled Griffin's show. Within a few months, Griffin was fired by CBS. His new show began the following Monday and ran until the mid-1980s. By 1986, Griffin was ready to retire and ended his talk show run. Thanks to profits from his highly successful game shows, Griffin had become one of the world's wealthiest entertainers.[5]

Game show creator[]

Griffin created and produced the successful television game show Jeopardy! in 1964; in an Associated Press profile released right before the show premiered, Griffin talked about the show's origins:[1]

My wife Julann just came up with the idea one day when we were in a plane bringing us back to New York from Duluth. I was mulling over game show ideas, when she noted that there had not been a successful 'question and answer' game on the air since the quiz show scandals. Why not do a switch, and give the answers to the contestant and let them come up with the question.

She fired a couple of answers to me: '5,280' and the question of course was how many feet in a mile. Another was '79 Wistful Vista.' That was Fibber and Mollie McGee's address. I loved the idea, went straight to NBC with the idea, and they bought it without even looking at a pilot show.

The show, originally titled What's the Question?, premiered on NBC on March 30, 1964, hosted by Art Fleming, and lasted for 11 years. Griffin wrote the 30-second piece of music heard during the show's Final Jeopardy! Round, and which later became the iconic melody of the theme for the syndicated version of the show hosted by Alex Trebek.

In 1975, NBC canceled Jeopardy! after moving it twice on its daytime schedule, despite having an additional year on its network contract left to fulfill. Griffin produced the show's successor, Wheel of Fortune, which premiered on January 6, 1975. Wheel, with Chuck Woolery as host and Susan Stafford as the hostess, had successful ratings throughout its network run. From December 1975 to January 1976, the show expanded to an hour, in response to the successful 60-minute version of The Price Is Right on CBS.

"Wheel" barely escaped cancellation in 1980, when NBC replaced three of its other game shows with a daytime talk show starring David Letterman; NBC finally cancelled it in 1989, when CBS picked it up for a year (only to return to NBC, when the daytime version was finally cancelled for good in 1991). The show became a phenomenon, when on September 19, 1983, a nighttime version hit the syndication market with Pat Sajak and Vanna White as host and hostess, respectively. Around the same time, Griffin composed the show's best-known theme song, "Changing Keys", which was used in several variants from then until 2002.

As for Jeopardy!, two different revivals of the show would be produced: one on NBC that ran for five months in late 1978/early 1979 with Art Fleming returning as host, and the other airing in first-run syndication beginning on September 10, 1984, starring Alex Trebek. The syndicated versions of both Jeopardy! and Wheel remain on the air today.

In 1990, Griffin had an ambitious but unsuccessful attempt at adapting the venerable board gameMonopoly into a game show of the same name. His last game show was a wild game show called Ruckus, which emanated from the Resorts International Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, which he owned at the time. Involving slapstick stunts and a somewhat truncated version of his old Reach for the Stars, the show initially aired locally in New York, with the intent of national syndication early the following year. The Amazing Johnathan left the show after 65 episodes because of a contract dispute and the show was scrapped before it was to be nationally syndicated. A national audience did get a look at it, via reruns that aired for a time on GSN.

On May 14, 2003, Griffin was honored with the Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) President's Award at its annual Film and Television Awards ceremony, for having created some of America's best-known game show melodies.[18]

In 2007, Griffin's production company, Merv Griffin Entertainment, began production on a new syndicated game show Merv Griffin's Crosswords (originally titled Let's Play Crosswords and Let's Do Crosswords). The show taped in Los Angeles after initial reports that it would be produced at WMAQ-TV in Chicago. The show was produced in association with Program Partners and the William Morris Agency and began airing September 10, 2007. NBC-owned-and-operated stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas carried the show, with many stations airing two episodes per day. The show lasted only one season, ending on May 16, 2008 in first-run and September 5, 2008 in reruns.

Business ventures[]

Merv Griffin Way with the Beverly Hilton in the background

Griffin ventured into real estate, purchasing the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. In 1988 Griffin purchased Resorts International and two of their hotels, in Atlantic City, NJ and Paradise Island in The Bahamas from Donald Trump and other investors. Part of the deal was that Trump would buy Resorts' interest in the yet to be constructed Taj Mahal project for $273 million.[19][20] Griffin subsequently sought bankruptcy court protection on Dec. 23, 1989 for Resorts International Inc., his troubled hotel and casino operator.[21]

The background to this was on Nov. 12, when Resorts reached a tentative agreement with certain bondholders, several bondholders petitioned the United States Bankruptcy Court in Camden, New Jersey, to put the company into involuntary bankruptcy to protect legal claims they might have against Trump, the real estate investor Griffin outbid for Resorts the prior year. As a result, this literally wiped out or greatly reduced the investments of the bondholders, so that Mr. Griffin could sue Trump and yet still retain a significant portion for himself.

Besides Resorts International, the holding company for casinos in Atlantic City and the Bahamas, three company affiliates also filed for Chapter 11 protection: Griffin Resorts Inc., Resorts International Financing Inc. and Griffin Resorts Holding Inc.

An active desert resident, he was a supporter of the La Quinta Arts Festival and the owner of the Merv Griffin Givenchy Resort & Spa in Palm Springs, now The Parker. He owned a ranch near La Quinta, California where he raised thoroughbredracehorses, as well as St. Clerans Manor, a boutique hotel, set in an eighteenth-century estate once owned by director John Huston, near Craughwell, in County Galway, Ireland. In the 1980s, Griffin purchased the Paradise Island Resort and Casino in the Bahamas for US$400 million from Trump, but he later sold it for just US$125 million. Griffin sold his empire to The Coca-Cola Company for $250 million in 1986, then went on a buying spree of hotels, so that his wealth in 2003 was said to be around $1.2 billion.[22][23]

Personal life[]

Griffin kept many details of his personal and business life private. In 1991, he was sued by Deney Terrio, the host of Dance Fever, another show Griffin created, alleging sexual harassment. The same year, Brent Plott, a longtime employee who worked as a bodyguard, horse trainer and driver, filed a $200 million palimony lawsuit. Griffin characterized both lawsuits as extortion.

Griffin's Los Angeles Times obituary repeated a 1991 statement he had made regarding Plott's lawsuit: "This is a shameless attempt to extort money from me. This former bodyguard and horse trainer was paid $250 a week, lived in one of two apartments underneath my former house as part of his security function, and left my payroll six or seven years ago. His charges are ridiculous and untrue."[24]

Ultimately, both suits were dismissed. He consistently evaded answering questions about his sexuality with a characteristic quip. In an interview with The New York Times published on May 26, 2005, Griffin said: "I tell everybody that I'm a quarter-sexual. I will do anything with anybody for a quarter."[25]

Until his death, Griffin remained friends with his ex-wife Julann Griffin, whom he cred with creating the premise of Jeopardy!

On being wealthy, he said that "if people know you're rich, they don't talk with you when you walk down the street." He kept his wealth an open secret, amassing media outlets, hotels and casinos with a net worth widely estimated at more than a billion dollars. Griffin stated he did not really know his worth because it "would keep me from sleeping at night".[4] Former First LadyNancy Reagan and he exchanged birthday greetings each July 6 for their shared birthday. Griffin was also an honorary pallbearer at the funeral of President Ronald Reagan in 2004, having been friends with both of the Reagans for many years.[26]

Illness and death[]

Griffin's prostate cancer, treated originally in 1996, returned and he was admitted to Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where his condition deteriorated, leading to his death on August 12, 2007, at the age of 82.[28][29] Griffin is survived by his son, Tony, born in 1959 during Griffin's marriage to Julann Wright from 1958 to 1976,[citation needed] as well as two grandchildren.[30]

GSN honored Griffin by airing ten-episode marathons of Wheel and Jeopardy! during the weekend of August 18–19, 2007. The Wheel marathon included two episodes with cameo appearances by Griffin: Sajak's departure from the daytime version in 1989 and a 1992–93 episode that ended with Griffin, his band "The MervTones," and White singing at a dinner club in Orlando, Florida. The Jeopardy! marathon consisted of a rerun of the Jeopardy! Million Dollar Masters Tournament from 2002. His estate was recently[when?] sold for $7 million.